The Idea of Justice
The argument of incompleteness is a recurrent theme in Sen’s writings, notably put forward in one of his most recent publications, The Idea of Justice, from 2009. In this book, Sen attempts to devise a counter-position to Rawls’ theory of justice (1971).
Rawls’s basic claim was that a unique set of principles of justice would emerge in a so-called original position where the individual members of society are under a veil of ignorance, not knowing their place in society, that is, their position or social status. The Rawlsian principles are meant to shape just institutions constituting the basic structure of society. Sen is very sceptical about the assumption that a unanimous agreement on one set of principles of justice will be brought about in the original position. He argues that there may be a plurality of reasons for justice, and if this is the case, how could one then arrive at one unique set of principles of justice?Sen denotes the derivation of an ideal theory of justice such as that by Rawls or, for example, the utilitarian philosophy as the transcendental approach. His own claim is “less elevated” or more humble. It is to,
address questions about advancing justice and compare alternative proposals for having a more just society, short of the utopian proposal of taking an imagined jump to a perfectly just world. Indeed, the answers that a transcendental approach to justice gives... are quite distinct and distant from the type of concerns that engage people in discussions on justice and injustice in the world (for example, inequities of hunger, poverty, illiteracy, torture, racism, female subjugation, arbitrary incarceration or medical exclusion as social features that need remedying). (Sen 2009: 96).
On page 2 of this book, Sen (2009) already formulates one of his main messages: “What is important, as central to the idea of justice, is that we can have a strong sense of injustice on many different grounds, and yet not agree on one particular ground as being the dominant reason for the diagnosis of injustice”.
This being so, you cannot expect to arrive at a complete social ordering. Since the members of society vary to some degree in their views of what a more just society should be like, we have to look for non-empty intersections among the individuals’ preference orderings, the shared beliefs of the different members of society and, from there, derive some partial ordering for society. Sen writes that “such incompleteness would not prevent making comparative judgments about justice in a great many cases... about how to enhance justice and reduce injustice” (2009: 105). Sen views his approach as comparative in contrast to the transcendental framework of Rawls and others. The economist, the social choice theorist in particular, may find the comparative approach more appealing than the transcendental perspective, while the philosopher may have the opposite view.
Wulf Gaertner
See also:
Kenneth Joseph Arrow (I); Abram Bergson [Abram Burk] (I); Economics and philosophy (III); Public choice (II); Paul Anthony Samuelson (I); Social choice (III); Utilitarianism and anti-utilitarianism (III); Welfare economics (III).